Indonesia is advancing plans to build a major oil refinery with Iran and intends to revive stalled talks over a separate project with Kuwait, making the third Opec peer eyeing investment there, officials said.

Indonesia Energy Minister Purnomo Yusgiantoro said energy firm PT Elnusa will sign a business agreement with an Iranian oil company to build a 300,000 barrel-per-day (bpd) refinery, advancing a project signed by both governments a year ago.
The $4 billion plant, which might be built in either West or East Java province, will coincide with President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's first state visit to Jakarta next week.
“This is a business-to-business deal,” Purnomo said.
Indonesia badly needs new oil refineries to meet its growing domestic oil products demand and is in talks with a string of foreign firms to build refineries. Officials earlier said they were studying a 400,000-bpd refinery joint venture with Saudi Aramco as two years of fat global profit margins and limited capacity triggered a wave of investment in Indonesia, which has struggled to build new plants.
Pertamina is also pursuing plans to build a 150,000-bpd refinery with China’s Sinopec in East Java, although many past plans have failed to deliver.
Separately last week, Pertamina president director Ari Soemarno said the firm would hold discussions with state-run Kuwait Petroleum Corp (KPC) and a private firm to resuscitate long-stalled plans to build a new oil plant in South Sulawesi.